In yesterday’s episode of “Missing Peace” on Channel 5 (watch catch-up episode here), Linda touched on how professional mediators manage family disputes in a wholesome problem-solving and relationship preserving manner. Soundbites below:
“Family mediations tend to be a lot more relational in nature. You deal with a lot more emotions, a lot more hurts, sometimes a lot of baggage that had transpired over many years. While money is often an issue, we also consider breakdown in trust and relationships so that we can help parties to move on by finding ways to improve on how they manage things in the future – communication, trust, relationship. It is not just about the money, although it is important.”“In most disputes, you will find that people tend to skip the process of trying to discover each other’s interests and they immediately jump to problem-solving. They will end up reaching an impasse because my solution does not meet your solution. The difference with a professional mediator is that after going through the whole process of discovering interests and motivations, we help parties brainstorm on a whole possible list options that can meet your interests. Sometimes it is monetary, sometimes it is not monetary, but it is important for the mediator and the parties to brainstorm. Even if some of the options that they come up with can be very ludicrous and not verity pragmatic, it is the process that matter, because the process helps the party to think out of the box and be creative.”